Here's a great analysis of InfoMagic by Paul Davis who sometimes posts here. Sorry for the pejorative framing about Gary North (not Paul's doing, obviously).

PaulDavisRebutsInfoMagic

-- Blue Himalayan (bh@k2.y), December 29, 1998

Answers

One thing is for sure this system will go down. I do not know if y2k will be the downfall of this merciless financial system but I do know that one day it will go down "like a millstone in the deep blue sea." Science is unable to hear warnings which come without "evidence" and letters and degrees. I can understand that but can you understand that this Financial System known as Babylon the Great is wrong and must be replaced. (Isn't it interesting that the US and Great Britain are attacking the very country which began this Babylonish Money Worshipping System? Iraq=Babylon) (Rev 18:2 KJV) "And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."

(Rev 18:3 KJV) "For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies."

(Rev 18:4 KJV) "And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues."

(Rev 18:9 KJV) "And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,"

(Rev 18:10 KJV) "Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come."

(Rev 18:11 KJV) "And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:"

TEOTWAWKI Mark

-- Mark Hillyard (foster@inreach.com), December 30, 1998.

(Rev. 16:10 NIV) "The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was plunged into darkness."

-- (niv@bib.org), December 30, 1998.

An interesting response to Paul's commentary just appeared.

http://www.smu.edu/cgi-bin/Nova/get/gn/309/2/1/2.html

Is _this_ InfoMagic?

Hint: AOL members have FTP sites.

IMHO Paul is right. InfoMagic tries to "prove" what appears to be his pre-existing assumption that All Is Toast. Psychedelic comments from John's Revelation (and occasionally GN), notwithstanding, humanity has some experience muddling through rough spots.

ZDNet (pollyana Central for some of us) has an excellent article today.

http://www.zdnet.com/zdy2k/1998/12/5461.html

It makes the point persuasively that up to now, no one has had any real grasp of the scale of the situation, but over the next several months a very accurate understanding of the likely problems will emerge because many will have already happened.

In the several years I've been following Y2K, the greatest danger always seemed to be simultaneity of the failures. However, now I don't think that will happen. (My opinion - dont flame me for proofs.) Instead of a heart attack, I expect cancer. Longer timeframe, indeterminate outcome, but optimism is not foolish.

It is perhaps essential.

-- Lewis (aslanshow@yahoo.com), December 30, 1998.

Yep. It's pretty sick, but with all the doctors and healers working over the next year fixing, and contingency planning, we just might muddle through the rolling Y2K changes over the next year and a half.

Diane

(P.S. Money is Divine energy too. Depends on how the human's use it to do "good" or not so good).

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 30, 1998.

Mark: yes I am afraid that the parallels in Revelation are much too coincidental to be of no significance to what is starting to happen.

"in one hour is thy judgement come" very aptly describes the rollover effect.

The "number of a man" is 666. You will see it every where next year in the form of the upside down 666 in 1999.

"let no man buy lest he have the number of the beast in his right hand or forehead" Already in place, as when we hand our credit card to a merchant (right hand), or recite it from memory over the phone (forehead).

and many, many others...

This is not strictly a religious issue. Jewish mathematicians proved an amazing thing in 1993 about the original Hebrew version of the Torah, which is basis of the first 5 books of the Jewish, Islamic and Christian holy scriptures. Equidistant letter sequences found by computer analysis revealed some type of advanced encoding scheme that is far in advance of what 20th century man or machine is capable of devising. It has been "proven" because the odds of the effect occuring randomly are millions to one, whereas standard statistical proof that something is not due to chance is on the order of 1:1000. Over five years later, it cannot be explained by the best skeptical minds of science.

Arthur C. Clark and the physicist Paul Davies (no relation to Paul Davis) expressed the opinion many years ago that man's first contact with higher intelligence would be through the discovery of an "artifact". The Torah code seems to be such an artifact. Why are we discovering it now? Daniel 12:4 sheds some light on this:

"But you, Daniel, close up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end."

Note that the Torah code is not to be confused with The Bible Code book, which tries to use the Torah code to predict the future. There does not seem to be anything to this particular theory.

-- a (a@a.a), December 30, 1998.

1999 upside down = 666? Maybe 666I (can't make an upside down 1)? What happened in 1666? 666? Come on, I could sit here all day quoting the bible to prove any point.

-- Buddy (DC) (buddy@bellatlantic.net), December 30, 1998.

Goodness, Blue. I report the identity of InfoMagic, allude to good news, and I get whacked in the head with the scriptures. Sheesh.

Perhaps I chose the wrong style of discourse. How about:

[2Tim 4:3] For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings,[2Tim 4:4] and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.

Written ca. 100AD. It came true.

Here come the Flames of Righteousness...

-- Lewis (aslanshow@yahoo.com), December 30, 1998.

After countless Y2K stories from the media that lulled one into believing that everything would be fine until, literally, January 1, 2000, there now seems to be a trend towards pointing out that Y2K problems have been occuring, are occuring, and will be occuring through 2000. That is certainly accurate.

But its also somewhat misleading, since one might otherwise assume that the "pain" associated with Y2K problems follows some kind of linear progression. It isn't, its more like a step function -- it will go from near zero to A Very High Value real fast. When people figure out that the banking system is dead meat by 1/1/2000, the banking system will be dead meat due to bank runs. If the power grid goes down on or about 1/1/2000 due to non-compliant embedded chips, then that will also tend to be a real heart stopper.

The point is, people are going to react. If they are completely unaware of Y2K, and TSHTF, they will react badly. If they think that Y2K is a progressive, but treatable disease, and TSHTF, they will react badly. If they become fully aware of the truth -- that Y2K cannot be fixed and it is just a matter of time before TSHTF -- they will react badly.

Thats the problem with Y2K, the problem that cannot be fixed and will be the end of the world as we know it: people are going to react badly no matter what.

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), December 30, 1998.

Forgive if I missed something but only Jack addressed the topic of this post. ie: an iteresting rebutal of InfoMagic. I've read Info a few times and I don't see any GOD stuff. I'm begining to think this forum has been taken over by the "Over the Top Wackos" who dwell in caves and live to hate. An entirely reasonable rebutle to a very shaky end of civilization theory and the first post out of the box is quoting scriptures. Ed's just selling books and on a certain level I can respect that, but a lot of you sincere doomers should open your eyes and look at just who you're lining up with

-- Jimmy Bagga Doughnuts (jim1bets@worldnet.att.net), December 30, 1998.

Jimmy, it does not matter who you are "lining up with". Even if it turned out that Ed Yourdon, Gary North, and Infomagic get together and play cards every Monday night and laugh about how much money they are making off of what they themselves believe to be a huge scam, that still would not change anything. The evidence for Y2K disasters should stand or fall on its own merits, not because of who is presenting it, or how much money they are making from it.

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), December 31, 1998.

The intention of my message was not to be "righteous" or preachy. I have been studying the Bible for some 25 years and only wanted to point out it is indicated that the financial system we are living under will collapse. The y2k professionals are making a prediction (prophecy) based on their knowledge of computer science and I am simply pointing out that they are not as "far out" as some make them to be. It is also indicated that life in general will just keep on keeping on and on the other hand "mens hearts failing them for fear of what is coming on the earth." In other words we/some would be very aware and scared to the point of heart failure. "Where has all my money gone, long time passing?" It is also indicated that at the conclusion of this "time of trouble" there will be PEACE.

-- Mark Hillyard (foster@inreach.com), January 01, 1999.

A comment about manufacturing and suppliers. Where I work, we manufacture computers (among other things). The first thing we do when designing a computer is select a chipset -- the real heart of the computer. Yes, there are 3 or 4 competing chipset vendors, but their products are utterly incompatible. The entire motherboard is designed around the chosen chipset. There are maybe 200 other different parts on the board, and all but a few of them has multiple sources. Those few, if not available, would involve some fairly minor (say two months) redesign and/or retest.

So we are looking at several layers of problems here. If the chipset itself dries up, the entire product is dead, permanently. If any other part dries up that would require a significant production delay to replace, it's likely that we'd miss the window for selling the product (computers become obsolete in two months). If a drop-in substitute part dries up, we can continue but the price goes up a little bit. Since our manufacturing profit margin is about 0.5%, we can't swallow too many of these today.

Other devices we design also depend on one or more sole-source, often custom-designed parts. We must consider the manufacturers of such parts to be critical. So we can live with the loss of over 90% of our vendors, provided that the 1% of critical vendors are not among them.

And of course none of this addresses any external problems, like failures of power, transportation, or manufacturing equipment. And of course we are assuming that the market for our products won't shrink appreciably either.

Most likely, some part of our operation will continue, but perhaps at a much reduced level. Which is probably true of most operations. I doubt that the resulting economy-wide high unemployment level will lead to a devolutionary spiral, but the outlook is far from rosy.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 01, 1999.